INDIA'S CONGRESS PARTY CLOSE TO DEATH (OBLIVION)

Date: 30/12/2015

India’s Congress party runs the risk of near-extinction as a political force in 2016

Nehru to be blamed for Kashmir issue

List of the Corruption Done By Congress

https://www.blogger.com/nullCongress magazine slams Jawaharlal Nehru, pats Sardar Patel
Congress president Sonia Gandhi with his son and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi leaving after hoisting the party flag during the 131st foundation day of Congress party function at AICC headquarters in New Delhi (Photo: PTI) Congress president Sonia Gandhi with his son and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi leaving after hoisting the party flag during the 131st foundation day of Congress party function at Mumbai: An article in the magazine published by the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee (MRCC) that targeted the Nehru-Gandhi family has not only caused major embarrassment to the party on its foundation day but has also exposed the bickering in various factions of the city Congress.
While MRCC president Sanjay Nirupam has hinted that this could be a conspiracy by his adversaries in the party, other leaders have demanded Mr Nirupam’s sacking. On the other hand, while Mr Nirupam claimed to have sacked “executive editor of the magazine” Sudhir Joshi, others have pointed out that Mr Joshi’s name does not appear anywhere in the magazine and no action has been taken against the four members of the editorial board of the magazine.
While the leaders are targeting each other, nobody seems to know who wrote the articles that questioned Jawaharlal Nehru’s China and Kashmir policies and called Sonia Gandhi’s father a “fascist”. The article was published without the author’s name. One of the articles in Congress Darshan, a Hindi magazine published by MRCC, which was supposed to be a tribute to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, had references to the strained relations between him and Nehru.
The article cited a letter Patel had purportedly written in 1950 to caution Nehru against China’s policy towards Tibet wherein he had described China as “unfaithful” and a future enemy of India. “Had Patel been heard (by Nehru) then, the problems of Kashmir, China, Tibet and Nepal wouldn’t have existed now. Patel opposed Nehru’s move of taking the Kashmir issue to the UNO,” the article said.
Another piece, which focused on Sonia, described her early life and her “ambition to become an air hostess”. It termed her father a “Fascist soldier” who, the article claimed, was a member of the Italian forces that lost to the Russians in World War II.
Mr Nirupam has apologised for publishing the said articles and also announced the sacking of Mr Joshi who was, according to him, executive editor of the magazine. “I am the de facto editor as being the MRCC president (sic). But I do not oversee the magazine personally,” he said.

The Congress party, which under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru led India to independence in 1947 and has ruled the country for most of its post-colonial history, runs the risk of near-extinction as a political force in 2016. Congress now has just 44 seats in parliament compared with the 282 of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of the prime minister, Narendra Modi; that is not even enough to qualify as the main opposition. In 2016 it will probably lose a number of state elections. Among the major states this will leave it in power only in Karnataka, whose capital is Bangalore, where Congress was humiliated in city-council elections in 2015. Neither Congress nor the BJP when it was out of power has ever been in quite such dire straits in terms of having virtually no regional bases to boast of.The blame for such ignominy is being heaped on the Congress’s leader-in-perpetual-waiting, Rahul Gandhi. Himanta Biswa Sarma, a former state minister who led a recent defection of Congress members in Assam, issued a pungent indictment of Mr Gandhi on his way out. Mr Sarma described him as a politician who has built a moat around himself; after months of trying unsuccessfully to speak with Mr Gandhi, Mr Sarma received a return phone call only when he was sitting in the office of the president of the BJP, announcing his defection. Not surprisingly, Mr Sarma did not answer the call.When he does agree to meet party leaders, Mr Gandhi’s habit of scrolling through his e-mails offends them. Congress’s leader in Punjab complained to Rahul’s mother, Sonia Gandhi, the party’s president, after walking out of a meeting in which Mr Gandhi spent much of his time on the phone. Mr Gandhi’s stumbling performances in his rare media interviews are painful to watch. So are his gaffe-prone speeches in parliament.One might expect a challenge to Mr Gandhi to be festering within Congress. Not a bit of it. He has the advantage of celebrity as the good-looking grandson of Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter and twice prime minister.By mid-2016, four major Indian states will have gone to the polls—Bihar in the north, West Bengal and Assam in the east, and Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the south. Congress will not win any of them. This may not bring a split in Congress as some predict, but 2016 will be the year in which the party, founded in 1885, is relegated to being a nonentity in Indian politics.

Indian National Congress: A Party in Crisis
Indian National Congress: A Party in Crisis
Weak leadership has left the party wandering the political wilderness.

The Indian National Congress is in crisis. Almost 18 months after its humiliating defeat in general elections, when it slumped to its worst performance ever – winning just 44 of the 543 seats in the lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha – the Grand Old Party is in a state of drift. It appears unsure of its next steps and bereft of ideas for its revival.
Electorally, the last 18 months have been a washout for the Congress party. It has performed miserably in every state assembly election held since the general election debacle. For instance, in the election to the Delhi state assembly in February, the party failed to win even one seat. The Delhi government had been in the hands of the Congress for 15 uninterrupted years till 2013.
The party’s footprint across India is shrinking rapidly. Of India’s 29 states, just ten are Congress-ruled today; in four of these states it rules as part of a coalition. It is absent in major states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu. In the ongoing elections to the Bihar state assembly it is a “bit player,” a humiliating comedown for a party that was once a political colossus. It is without a strong base anywhere in the country.
Not only has the Congress lost its central role in Indian politics to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance, it appears to have ceded its position as the standard bearer of the center-left agenda to a political greenhorn, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Founded in 1885, the Congress led the country to freedom from British colonial rule. It has dominated India’s post-independence politics, ruling the country for 54 of the past 68 years, either on its own or as the leader of coalition governments. It was only in 1977 that the Congress was defeated for the first time ever in national elections, when voters punished the party for “excesses” committed during Emergency rule (1975-77). So angry were voters with the party and its leaders that a political comeback seemed impossible.
Yet the Congress bounced back to power in 1980, won a landslide mandate in 1984 and until the early 1990s formed governments without the support of other parties. Between 2004 and 2014, a Congress-led coalition, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) ruled for two five-year terms. The second of these terms was marked by poor governance and unprecedented levels of corruption. While a Congress defeat in the May 2014 election was widely predicted, even its worst critics did not expect it to be mauled as severely as it was.
‘Still to Recover’
Eighteen months later, the Congress “is still to recover” from the electoral rout observes Sandeep Shastri, political analyst and pro vice chancellor of Jain University in Bengaluru. There are “no visible signs” of its prospects having improved, he says, attributing this in part to the reluctance of the party “to make a dispassionate analysis of the factors responsible for its defeat.”
In the wake of the Congress’ defeat in the general election an in-house probe was instituted into the reasons for the party’s dismal performance. Rather than pointing the finger at the party leadership, it laid the blame for the electoral drubbing at the door of the Congress-led government. In fixing culpability for the poll debacle it was thus silent on the lackluster leadership of Rahul Gandhi, who led the election campaign.
The Congress “conveniently placed the blame on ‘collective responsibility,’” Shastri observed, stressing that in doing so it chose “to duck the challenge” of tackling the underlying reasons for its defeat instead of “facing it head on.”
In the process the party has failed to reform its organization or tackle issues related to its functioning and leadership that may have contributed to its decline and fall.
Heavily centralized in its decision making, particularly since the 1970s, the Congress has a top-down style and is heavily dependent on the Nehru-Gandhi family to provide it with leadership, hold the party together, and win it votes. The party “has also not thought it fit to groom state level leaders with a popular base who can galvanize the state units of the party,” Shastri noted.
Especially in the wake of the Congress’ annihilation in the general election, calls for reform of the party’s organizational structure and functioning have grown, but the past 18 months have seen little progress in this direction. Questions have been raised, too, over the leadership skills of 45-year-old Rahul Gandhi. A scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family, which has given India three prime ministers, Rahul is expected to take over the reins of the Congress from party president, Sonia Gandhi, his mother.
The Trouble With Rahul
In the run-up to general elections, Rahul was derided for his lack of charisma and oratory skills, his disinterest in politics and shirking of responsibility, long absences from the country and rare appearances in parliament. During the 2014 election campaign, Rahul was criticized for his bland approach, especially in comparison to the electrifying style of the BJP’s Narendra Modi.
In the 18 months since he led the party to its most spectacular defeat, Rahul has yet to prove his capacity as a vote-catcher for the party. He hasn’t been able to boost the sagging spirits of the Congress rank and file. His two-month long sabbatical during the crucial budget session of parliament earlier this strengthened the perception that he lacks interest in politics and does not have the stamina demanded of a leader looking to rebuild a battered political party.
What is more, doubts over his ability to lead the Congress’ revival have triggered an array of rifts in the party over the past year. Congress old-timers are reportedly unhappy with Rahul’s “handling of organizational matters.” Intense opposition to Rahul’s leadership in various states could snowball into open rebellion. Indeed, it is widely believed that it is to avert an all-out revolt that Rahul’s elevation to the post of party president later this year was put off.
Gandhi family loyalists are firm in their belief that Rahul has what it takes to lead the party out of the political wilderness. His growing visibility, increasing interventions in parliament, and new-found aggression in taking on the Modi government, which forced the latter to abandon a contentious land acquisition bill, has enthused party workers somewhat. But rebuilding the Congress and saving it from political irrelevance needs much more than Rahul’s intermittent interventions.
If the Congress is keen to revive its prospects it will alter the way it functions. It will need to “groom state level leaders with a popular base who can galvanize the state units of the party,” Shastri says. Such state level leaders, who “have their ear to the ground,” should be made “part of the central leadership team,” he says, “so that the right inputs can be provided to the party `high command.’”
Importantly, the Congress needs to be leading the opposition to the BJP-led government. In the past 18 months, on several occasions the Congress could have mobilized the masses against the BJP’s policies. But it “allowed these opportunities to slip by,” Shastri observes, pointing to the land acquisition bill and the rise of religious intolerance as two classic examples where it allowed other political formulations to take the initiative.
Since it came to power, the BJP government has failed on multiple fronts. Prices of essential commodities are soaring. The agrarian crisis is deepening. And religious intolerance and anti-minority violence have assumed worrying proportions.
While Rahul has visited rural communities that are seeing a surge in farmers’ suicides or were at the receiving end of communal attacks, the Congress has not attempted a systematic critique of the BJP’s policies or ventured on a mass mobilization on any of these issues. It could use such mass mobilization against the government to forge unity within the party and to rally other opposition parties behind it. This could provide the basis for its own political and organizational rejuvenation.
But before setting out to do that, the Congress needs to set its house in order. An important first step in that direction would require it to set in motion a genuine process of democratization of the party, its structure and functioning. This will require elections for all posts, including those of party president, members of the Congress Working Committee, its apex decision making body, and state presidents.
If the Congress party is keen to present a new rejuvenated face to the electorate, it needs to radically reform itself. Fail to do that, and it will only sink further into political oblivion.

List of the Corruption Done By Congress....
We need a clean party, See how clean this INC is :
Scams under Indian National Congress governance:

Nehru to be blamed for Kashmir issue and Sonia's dad was a fascist soldier': Clanger by Congress mouthpiece stuns leaders

In an embarrassment to Congress, articles in its mouthpiece today criticised Jawaharlal Nehru's policy on Kashmir issue and alleged that Sonia Gandhi's father was a "fascist soldier", leaving the party squirming over the controversy on its Foundation Day.
An unsigned write-up in the Mumbai unit's journal, coinciding with the party's 131st foundation day, blamed Nehru for "the state of affairs in Kashmir, China and Tibet" even as another write-up made controversial remarks on party chief Sonia Gandhi, forcing its editor and Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam to order inquiry even as he claimed he was unaware of the content.
Both these articles, which do not bear the name of the writer, have been published in this month's issue of 'Congress Darshan' Hindi edition as a tribute to the country's first Home Minister Sardar Vallabbhai Patel on his death anniversary on December 15.
The article states that Nehru should have listened to freedom fighter and former home minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's views on international affairs. “Despite Patel getting the post of deputy prime minister and home minister, the relations between the two leaders remained strained, and both had threatened to resign time and again,” reads the article.
The article, which does not bear the name of the writer, has been published in this month's issue of Congress Darshan Hindi edition as a tribute piece to mark Patel's death anniversary on 15 December.
"Despite Patel getting the post of deputy prime minister and home minister, the relations between the two leaders remained strained, and both had threatened to resign time and again," the article says.
If Nehru had embraced Patel's foresight, many problems in international affairs would not have arisen, it adds.
http://s3.firstpost.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/NEHRU_Screengrab_380.jpgScreengrab"Nehru (PM) was in charge of foreign affairs and kept Kashmir with him, citing it as an international issue. But Patel, being deputy PM, would sometimes attend the cabinet meetings. Today's problems wouldn't have existed had Patel's foresight in the Kashmir issue been considered then," says the article.
The article cited a letter that Patel wrote to Nehru in 1950 to warn him against China's policy towards Tibet and where "Patel described China as unfaithful, and a future enemy of India…"
"Had Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel been heard then (by Nehru), the problems of Kashmir, China, Tibet and Nepal wouldn’t have existed now. Patel opposed Nehru’s move of taking the Kashmir issue to the UNO,” stated the article, adding, “Nehru did not agree with Patel’s views on Nepal."
Mumbai Regional Congress Committee chief and editor of the journal Sanjay Nirupam said he is not involved in the day-to-day functioning of the magazine and was unaware of the article.
"I do not agree with the article. It seems to have been sourced, but I don't know who the writer is," Nirupam, who in his earlier stint with Shiv Sena edited Hindi newspaper 'Dopahar Ka Saamana', said, adding that corrective measures would be taken.
Nirupam, however, told NDTV: "The kind of words that have been used in Congress Darshan are worrying. I take responsibility for this, and the matter shall be investigated thoroughly. We will take action against those responsible."
Another article, which focuses on Congress President Sonia Gandhi, describes her early life in great detail, including her "ambition to become an airhostess", as well as allegation that her father was a member of the Italian forces that lost to the Russians in the World War.
"Sonia Gandhi's father Stephano Maino was a former fascist soldier," it alleged.
The write-up also describes how Sonia quickly rose to the position of party president.
"Sonia Gandhi registered as a primary member of the Congress in 1997 and became the party’s president in 62 days. She also made an unsuccessful attempt to form a government," the article says.
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